The COVID-19 pandemic represents the most severe and rapid shock to the Irish economy in modern times. This paper examines the short-run, three-month impact of the pandemic on rental affordability and missed payments for a specific cohort of the private rental sector in Ireland. It focuses on...

In this paper we examine the implications for the Irish housing market of the economic slowdown due to the Covid-19 virus. While necessary from a public health perspective, the administrative closure implemented by the Irish authorities in March 2020 has had several significant repercussions for...

Assessing the contribution of intangible investment to growth is a challenging and complex task for any country. However, it has become increasingly difficult to determine both the exact magnitude of economic performance and its composition in the case of the Irish economy. This is mainly due to...

We review the recent performance of the Euro area economy, focusing in detail on the separate roles played by labour input, capital input and total factor productivity (TFP). After a long period of catching up with US levels of labour productivity, Euro area productivity growth has, since the...

A reason for revising the EU fiscal rules in the early 2010s was to improve member states' forecasts against a background of documented biases in official projections. Using data from Stability and Convergence Programmes and the European Commission's Spring Forecasts, evidence is presented which...

Blanchard and Leigh (2013, 2014) find fiscal multipliers to be underestimated in the EU in the deep recession of the early 2010s. Using two 2013-2018 datasets for 26 EU member states, assembled from Stability and Convergence Programmes and the European Commission's Spring Forecasts, we show that...

Data from member states' Stability and Convergence Programmes from 2011 to 2018 are used to assess the cyclicality of government consumption in the EU after the European Semester took effect. Econometric estimations, which address endogeneity issues, find the intended (ex-ante) fiscal policy to...

The likely substantial impact of COVID-19 related measures on the public finances of European countries has prompted an unprecedented call for new and significant policies at a European level to alleviate the pressures on individual member states. The administrative closures adopted across a...